Wrong 'Em Boyo

I feel like the American memory is incredibly short. We feel absolutely traumatized by certain events and at the time we feel like it's killing us, drowning us where we stand without filling our lungs with anything, knocking us flat on our asses 'cause it seems like the problem's come out of nowhere. But then, so quickly, we move the hell on and suddenly it's like nothing ever happened, and we're left without even a scar to remind us of the wound we once had.

It's been eight years since 9-11 and I feel like the vast majority of Americans have already forgotten how they felt that day. Even my own generation seems to have lost a sense of how bad they felt that day, of how scared they were, of how it felt like the world was crashing down around us and this was probably the single most important event that's happened in our lifetimes that could have an effect on our psyches, not counting of course the fall of the USSR.

But 9-11 holds particular significance for me and the fact that people don't remember really bothers me on a personal level. My dad's a firefighter and, on that day in 2001, had been one for only about a year and half. Still, I know for a fact that he would have been one of the last guys in, that he would have kept going until he was sure everyone was out, and that, ultimately, he'd have been killed that day, if we lived in NYC. It's weird, you know? Having to deal with him as a father annoys the hell out of me, but when I think of him as a man, independent of my mom and my brother and I, I really respect and admire who he is and respect the things that he would do and has done. I even like to believe that, if I'd been a firefighter that day, I'd do the same things that he would have.

So now that people kind of disregard everything that happened that day, all the good men that were killed, and more or less feel disjointed from everything that's happened as a result of 9-11, I feel really, deeply pissed off. Do they have any idea what those firefighters and cops sacrificed to try and save the people that were trapped? Can they even imagine what the families who lost someone feel like now? Or have they stopped to thing how haunted a lot of people are by what could have happened but didn't, the near-misses that a lot of people suffered or how people like me might feel?

Probably not. And already, only eight years since, people are making jokes, like they never felt any fear or pain at all. The people of New York City will never forget, as Obama's fly over the Statue of Liberty in Air Force One proved. ... or maybe they have and they just don't like to advertise it, and only the people who saw something and lost someone really remember. I don't know. I can't really feel too optimistic on a day like this, when I've already heard people joke half-heartedly about it.

So, really, I'm stuck. I didn't lose anyone but I could have; I've got no real reason to feel this way. But maybe, just maybe...